U.S. Census Bureau - Grand Ronde (2010) 2:45 (USA)

From Über Content director Jason Kohn.

For this campaign we wanted to show real people representing all of America. So far we have shot a total of 12 days in Washington D.C., Chicago, Austin, San Antonio and Blanco, Texas, Portland and Miami. We are also doing another round of spots later this month shooting in and around New York City.

The challenge of casting 26 people to represent all of America was difficult. Our primary focus was finding a diverse group of people in each of the cities we visited. Diversity in this case meant not just race, gender, and nationality, but also people of different ages, political beliefs, economic situations and life experiences.

In Washington DC, when we were looking for immigrants, we spoke with the Housing Authority who pointed us to several interesting neighborhoods including a house filled entirely with people from Togo. When we looked for Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, a spokesperson for the Grande Ronde tribe connected us with four generations of women living and working together on the reservation whose stories span a century of life including the termination and reinstatement of the tribal land itself. Sometimes we had contacts through friends and family and sometimes we met our subjects on the street. We found Chris in Austin because the sign outside his taxidermy shop had a ten-foot deer on top of a 30 foot pole. You couldn't miss it.

Hopefully, the importance of filling out the census will be implicit when someone visits the site and sees such a wide variety of people who clearly need to be counted as parts of our country.

Titles: Chris, Breanne & Dave, Grazina, Grand Ronde, Snows
Client: U.S. Census Bureau

Agency: Draft FCB, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Michael Simons
EVP, Group Creative Director: Gary Resch
VP, Group Creative Director: Kevin Dreyfuss
Creative Director: Chaz Mee
Executive Producer: Kelly Fagan
Agency Producer: Bailey Kindlon
VP, Management Director: David Berenbroick
Account Executive: Nicholas Fico

Director: Jason Kohn
Production Company: Über Content, Los Angeles
Executive Producers: Preston Lee, Phyllis Koenig, Steve Wi
Director of Photography: Heloisa Passos

Editorial Company: Cosmo Street, New York
Editors: Doug Abel, Bernardo Revilla, Justin Quagliata
Executive Producer: Maura Woodward
Producer: Heather Richardson